Thursday, 3 February 2011

"Something like this occurred in Nazi Germany. Dawkins dismisses any suggestion that the crimes of the Nazis could be linked with atheism. "What matters," he declares in The God Delusion, "is not whether Hitler and Stalin were atheists, but whether atheism systematically influences people to do bad things. There is not the smallest evidence that it does." This is simple-minded reasoning. Always a tremendous booster of science, Hitler was much impressed by vulgarised Darwinism and by theories of eugenics that had developed from Enlightenment philosophies of materialism. He used Christian antisemitic demonology in his persecution of Jews, and the churches collaborated with him to a horrifying degree. But it was the Nazi belief in race as a scientific category that opened the way to a crime without parallel in history. Hitler's world-view was that of many semi-literate people in interwar Europe, a hotchpotch of counterfeit science and animus towards religion. There can be no reasonable doubt that this was a type of atheism, or that it helped make Nazi crimes possible."

> He used Christian antisemitic demonology in his persecution of Jews, and the churches collaborated with him to a horrifying degree.

exactly. he used religious ideology, BELIEF IN GOD, to justify his persecution of jews, not a DISBELIEF in god.

> But it was the Nazi belief in race as a scientific category that opened the way to a crime without parallel in history.

race IS a scientific category whether you are theistic or atheistic. the OPPOSITE however is the more dangerous belief, that one race is divinely appointed to rule over another race!

> Hitler's world-view was that of many semi-literate people in interwar Europe, a hotchpotch of counterfeit science and animus towards religion.

this completely contradicts hitler's use of religious belief in god and biblical antisemitism as grounds for persecuting jews.

> There can be no reasonable doubt that this was a type of atheism, or that it helped make Nazi crimes possible.